I slipped into the Gallery before we opened this morning and took a quick photo of the latest works-in-progress on the easel:
The big painting at the back was done from the new balcony of the Golf Club and is looking over Porthloo in the foreground. Taylor’s Island and Newford Island are in the centre ground with the harbour, Hugh Town and the Garrison in the background. The painting of seapinks on the right is on the Garrison with St. Agnes in the background. The painting on the left has been started this week and shows part of the nature trail at Porth Hellick with wooden deck path leading away and English bluebells in the foreground.
Yesterday (Thursday) was our changeover day in the apartments which meant that, although it was bright and sunny, we were kept busy servicing ‘Serica’ and ‘Golden Eagle’ in the morning ready for our new arrivals in the afternoon. So Stephen wasn’t able to go out painting. The previous day (Wednesday) was cool, grey and overcast all day so he concentrated on work in the Gallery while I spend the day planting tomatoes, weeding the vegetable plot and working in the greenhouse.
Stephen has started working in acrylic inks over the last year and tends to use a smaller format than his full size and large watercolours. He found the inks a bit of a struggle to start with because they don’t behave the same as watercolours and are, if possible, even more unforgiving when it comes to putting colour on paper! The reason he chose them was because he likes working in inks but ordinary watercolour inks are relatively fugitive, whereas the acrylic inks are very lightfast. In addition, he uses a much smoother and stiffer medium with quite a glossy surface for the acrylic inks rather than the much more absorbent paper he uses for watercolours.
The photo above isn’t particularly good but it gives an idea of the work he is doing. Acrylic inks are even more of a challenge because he paints directly onto the paper, without putting any pencil sketch in place beforehand, and admits that, for every finished painting, there is at least one and possibly two that get torn up!
Anyway, there doesn’t look like much good painting weather on offer over the next few days with only cool and showery weather forecast …
Glandore on Scilly 
Leave a Reply